Redemption: Conclusion
by Onimiman
Summary: I'm not sure if I'm not allowed to write a conclusion to someone else's work, but the delay to Nikki411's SW Redemption fanfic was killing me. So I just had to resolve it myself. And Nikki411, if you manage to find this, please PM me to let me and the rest of your readers know that your story is still on. And then I'll take this story down.


Redemption: Conclusion

Tarick lay dead at Vestara's feet. His corpse had a charred hole in the center of his chest, evident of an impalement from the still-lit lightsaber held in Vestara's hand. She was breathing hard from the duel that had just begun minutes earlier and ended mere moments ago in the jungle around them; Tarick Graylo, her childhood friend-turned rival, was finally gone; his death having transpired on Fevrin, the planet from which he used to hide away from the rest of the Lost Tribe, and which he would have used to train Ben, Vestara's lover, into a Sith Lord.

As for Ben himself, he had just been defeated by his own father in a similar duel that ended in neither of their deaths. Luke managed to win the fight by getting past his son's defenses and knocking him unconscious with the butt of his lightsaber around the same time that Vestara managed to end Tarick's life. When Vestara looked to the Grand Master of the Jedi Order, they nodded to each other before deactivating their lightsabers and hooking them to their belts. Luke then picked the unconscious Ben up in his arms, and afterward, he and Vestara began to trudge back to the _Jade Shadow_, leaving Tarick's cadaver behind.

A few minutes later, Luke and Vestara returned to the clearing where the former parked the _Shadow_ just as Ben was beginning to stir into consciousness. Luke waved his natural hand over Ben's head to induce a minor Force suggestion for Ben to continue his rest; while that may not work on a regular Jedi, it could work if they weren't fully conscious, and it was certainly possible under the capable hands of the Jedi Grand Master. As Ben returned to sleep, Vestara used the Force to unlock the boarding ramp to the _Shadow_, and she and Luke hurried up so that he could rush Ben to the medical bay. Vestara stayed behind for a few seconds to close up the boarding ramp before joining Luke's form to the med bay.

There, the middle-aged Quarren male, Dr. Zordbog, stood waiting for them. Luke wasted no time laying Ben's unconscious form on top of one of the med beds before helping Zordbog to strip Ben of his robe and tunic before strapping him down in case he woke up inconveniently. He began stirring again, which prompted the Quarren to quickly extract the transpirator hooked up to the bed, place it over Ben's mouth, and then he began to pump the transpirator with a knockout gas for a few seconds before Ben lapsed into unconsciousness yet again.

"How long will that keep him out?" Luke asked.

"About ten minutes," Zordbog answered as he placed a cloth that he had just dabbed with alcohol on Ben's bicep and removed the transpirator from the human teenager's mouth. "And that's all the time I need to administer the cure."

"Then what are you waiting for?" Vestara asked impatiently from behind and beside Luke. "Administer it!"

Wordlessly, Zordbog began to do so as he walked over to a nearby med cabinet and opened it up. He first took out a syringe, sterilized it, then took out a vial of blue liquid, uncapped it while still holding the syringe, extracted several milligrams of the blue fluid from the vial before capping it, replacing it back into the cabinet, then calmly walked back to Ben and injected him with the liquid.

As soon as the cure was given, Ben began to stir once more, but this time, no one made a move to knock him out again. All three of the other beings simply decided to wait for Ben to recover.

Since Tarick had infected Ben with Sith blood that artificially turned him to the dark side of the Force, Luke and Vestara had struggled to come up with a way for Ben to be cured of the Sith blood even as they traveled over to Fevrin. On the way over, they stopped by a nearby planet named Reegon in order to stock up on supplies where, on the surface, Vestara chanced on a holozine on a newsstand. The front page featured Zordbog as a renowned professor at the planet's university who had come up with a cure to multiple personality disorders; it had the benefit of working on all the sentient species that Zordbog was legally allowed to test it on; those of his own kind, Mon Calamari, Wookiees, Bothans, Bith, Muuns, and even humans.

Vestara had a thought then; she took it to Luke in order to see if they could get Zordbog to take his cure for Ben. Since they had no better ideas, Luke agreed and they went to Reega's university to meet Dr. Zordbog. In spite of Zordbog's hesitation, he eventually agreed to come with Luke and Vestara in order to help Ben; at the very least, he could see how his cure would work on someone who didn't necessarily have multiple personality disorder per se. And since the school year was just done, joining Luke and Vestara would make better use of his experiments than working in the university, he thought, considering Ben's condition.

Now here they all were; and only time would tell whether or not Zordbog's cure could work.

A few minutes later, Ben woke up of his own accord. There were no signs of his time as a darksider; no yellow in his eyes, nor any darkness in his Force presence from what Luke and Vestara could feel.

"Dad? Vestara?" Ben asked groggily. "You guys... managed to get me back?"

Luke and Vestara smiled. Ben was back. Luke could feel it, and Vestara could feel it more, considering the Force bond she made with him on the night that they lost their virginity to each other.

"Ben!" Vestara exclaimed as she ran into his arms. He returned the embrace happily before sharing a kiss with Vestara. Luke watched on with a happy grin, no longer uncomfortable with Ben's relationship to a Sith.

Luke then turned back to the Quarren. "Thank you, Dr. Zordbog. If it weren't for you and your cure, I don't know what I would have had to do to get my son back. In fact, I'm not even sure _if_ I could have gotten him back. Say, how would you feel about a transfer to Coruscant?"

"I thought you were banned from Coruscant, Master Skywalker," Zordbog pointed out. "I somehow doubt that your say will facilitate any such transfer."

"Don't worry," Luke assured. "I somehow doubt that that ban will be imposed on me for much longer."

"What do you mean by that?" Zordbog asked.

Inwardly, Luke grinned. Since the Jedi were now officially at war with Daala, it wouldn't take much time before they ousted her and Luke's exile would be lifted. But he decided to keep that from Zordbog. "You'll see," was all he offered.

"Well, either way, I still have to do some tests on Ben to make sure there are no side effects from the injection," Zordbog said.

"And we still have to hunt down Abeloth," Luke said. "So I guess you're joining us, Doctor."

Zordbog was hesitant to respond to that as Luke left the medbay to enter the _Shadow_'s cockpit and prepare the ship for takeoff. "Well, okay then," Zordbog said awkwardly to the Grand Master's retreating form before turning to Ben and Vestara. "If you don't mind, young lady," he said to the Sith, "I need to do some tests on your boyfriend to make sure he won't get sick or something later on from what I put in him."

Vestara looked to Ben for affirmation first. "Go, Vestara. I'll be fine."

"Okay," she said with a loving smile. "I love you."

"I love you, too," Ben responded before kissing her again. Then she left the medbay.

As Zordbog prepared to commence his tests, Ben simply lay back on the bed and thought, _No matter what, regardless of me being a Jedi and her a Sith, we'll make this relationship work somehow. I know it._

THE END.


End file.
